Here we are, in our full costumed regalia. D wanted to walk in comfort and warmth while ripping on the NFL and I was going for a Saint / winged-football-goddess sort of look. Not many notice that the mask represents a football field with yard lines. Yes, I am a dork.
It doesn’t look too shabby in the picture above, but I wasn’t pleased with the quality of my costume this year for a number of reasons:
a) Notice severe lack of headdress. Thanks to bad weather all across America over the weekend and the classic incompetence of Delta Airlines gate agents, I didn’t reach New Orleans halfway into Sunday. Therefore and alas, between abuse taken during repeated trips to the airport and the fact that the sealant fumes still coming off it would have rendered our entire airplane unconscious, my headdress had to be left behind. An almost-seizure-inducing hour on the phone yesterday with Delta corporate customer service got me a $100 voucher good towards the purchase of a future flight. Woo to the hoo.
b) Too tired on Tuesday morning to do anything more glam with hair. Boo!
c) The wings didn’t make it past the car. Yes, I forgot to put them on once we reached our destination, leaving me prey to an endless string of tourists asking, “What are you supposed to be? An Indian?” D and I wanted to say, “Yeah, Mardi Gras Indian!” But, we didn’t think they would understand.
d) Costume 2010 would have been decidedly more spectacular had I not been forced to wear a whole sweatsuit under it. Damned cold. Actually, damned fluctuating temperatures, which made poor Loki so ill he had to go to the doctor on Mardi Gras Day instead of leading the annual Krewe of Chartreuse walk. Ick.
We caught some of the Zulu parade, walked into the Quarter, ate chili cheese tots at the Three Legged Dog and ended up at home away from home, i.e. Fahy’s. As usual, our evening ended early. To quote Editor B: “Mardi Gras is primarily an early morning holiday, at least to me. It’s kind of like Christmas in that way. This is contrary to the image many casual tourists might have in mind, due to the common association linking revelry with late nights. But I rarely stay out late on Mardi Gras, and for me the best part of the day is generally before noon.”
Spatial Sustain | A call for a coordinated and conflated mapping effort between OpenStreetMaps and Google MapMaker in light of the Haitian earthquake. “Not surprisingly, the two data sets don’t match, and the question becomes what data is correct and how can the data be conflated to create a unified and accurate map.”
* Slashdot | Tech NGO’s Working In Haiti: Please also give to Télécoms Sans Frontières which “brings mobile telecom rigs and satellite phones to disaster sites, making sure that responders on the ground can communicate with each other and that individuals can contact families abroad.” Their donation site is super-slow, so please be patient.
JAN 15TH AM UPDATES
* New York Times Interactive Map: Use the slider to compare before and after satellite imagery of key buildings in Port-Au-Prince. Good job, NYT!
* Servir Maps: Damage assessment (before and after) maps and a good preliminary assessment of erosion/landslide potential.
* John McQuaid | Why Haiti Is Not New Orleans: “Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake are fundamentally different. That many people are lumping them together shows how superficial and ignorant we collectively remain about disasters – and also why we never do an adequate job of preparing for them.” Wonderful essay, I encourage you to read all of it. Haiti needs the spotlight on its disaster in itself, and not for the global media to make wrong and useless comparisons to other disasters when idiot armchair critics far away can do that all by themselves.
Welcome to the first of the twelve days of Christmas. The twelfth day of Christmas marks Epiphany, much more relevant to merrymakers worldwide as the start of Carnival season. See, this is how you keep that tree up until Lent. Just change out all the ornaments. Or pull off only the red baubles and replace them with purple ones. Never say I taught you nothing.
Anyway, back to the point of this post: variations on the yuletide video. All this twelve days of leaping and dancing is for the lazy vesterners, you know! This is how we do Christmas in the desh. With telemarketers, 7-11 workers, yoga and complaints of insufficient dowries. Touchdown! (Don’t let D in on the dowry bit. He didn’t get one.)
For more masala mayhem, look no further than Santa Singh getting his balle balle on over at Humid City. On with the Hostilidays, I say, even if Suspect Dhas won wins every year.
